Value and ITIL4® – From the lead trainer

To introduce myself, my name’s Adam White-Bower, and I’m Quanta’s lead ITIL4® trainer. I’ve been teaching ITIL® for many many years, and have worked with organisation to improve their service management practices for a lot longer than that. If you’re interested in ITIL, then you need to hear about value. 

The Basics of value

Whatever you think ITIL4 is about, first and foremost it is about using IT service Management to unlock value for the customer from its investment in IT.

Budgets are under more pressure than ever, and spending in all areas is under scrutiny.

Being able to demonstrate which IT services and technology will drive greater productivity and value for the organisation is key.

How do we improve value?

ITIL4 places value front and centre in the discussion and encourages us to have these value-based conversations from the start. It does this by:

• Always pushing us to know who our stakeholders are and engaging with them to better understand “who needs what” from IT services.
• Translate that understanding into a catalogue of IT services where the customer can clearly see how the service will support organisational goals and deliver more value than they cost and that risks are effectively and appropriately managed on both the customer and service provider side.
• Design services that use technology in a way which recognises constraints on resources. Then apply Lean approaches to identifying and eliminating waste throughout the lifecycle of designing, building, testing, deploying, releasing and operating IT services.
• Place the user in the discussion. Don’t just make it about what the customer can afford and the service provider’s capabilities. What will it take to make the end user engage and maximise the potential of the service and get their jobs done?

Throughout ITIL4 these themes come back to us in various ways – from creating a customer and service-focused culture, to creating holistic service offerings.

The Service Value System (SVS)

The framework that ITIL institutes comes in the form of the Service Value System (Guiding Principles, Continual Improvement, Governance, Practices and the ‘Service Value Chain’ operating model). The SVS provides us with all the key elements to assure that value can be created not just now but going into the future as the provider continuously seeks to align and remain aligned with the changing needs of the organisation and the challenge of ever greater demand for digital services for our customer’s customers as well as those within our own boundary.

ITIL4 recognises that value can be compromised if the provider doesn’t work closely with the customer to see overall how the organisation intends to progress and what its strategy is. Considering the provision of IT services as a core strategic consideration and not an after-thought has never been more important and organisations that recognise this and apply best practice to transition from traditional to digital capability will be well placed going forwards.

Understanding the need and the pace of change there is behind this move and working to transform the organisations is one of the big challenges facing organisations across the spectrum, not just in one area. From digital diagnostic tools to the explosion in online retail, entertainment and finance, what organisations expect from IT services has changed and ITSM needs to change with it in order to really deliver value. ITIL4 is right there to help us achieve this.

I’m always available to talk about ITIL4 and its benefits for organisations and customers, so if you want to get in touch, you can reach me via email:

adam.white-bower@quanta.co.uk